PNG Trust & LRC Objectives

Many reports on the status of women in PNG have continuously stated the need to establish programs that would directly benefit women and girls in Papua New Guinea. Recognising that this sector of society is the most disadvantaged, not only in PNG but elsewhere in other countries, many international and national organisations and governmental agencies are now concentrating their efforts in making this possible.

In this instance, the Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) in Japan, in conjuction with CIDA have agreed to co-fund a Literacy Resource Centre that is aimed at helping women and girls.

The LRC is being constructed and managed by PNG Trust with a management team being set up of relevant NGOs and Government agencies who will all have access to the facilities and materials offered in the LRC. Within PNG Trust, the management of the LRC will be the responsibility of the Trust Meri and the Steering Committee who will have full control of the day to day administration of the LRC.

This establishment of this LRC is a country-wide project and is therefore aiming to help thousands of women and girls. On the other hand, it is based in Port Moresby and therefore we anticipate that most of the social service agencies in the capital will be able to utilise this center to assist them in their work. This will be achieved through the provision of training, materials and resources for agencies dealing with women and girls issues, to enable them to assist this disadvantaged population.

This center will also provide the organisation with more office space as it is connected to the existing property. Some staff, equipment and materials will be moved over to the new building to alleviate the congested atmosphere which we have had to work in. Also under this project, a more efficient desktop publishing capacity is intended, not only for LRC purposes but also for general needs of the PNG Trust network.

Most importantly, this center will provide office space for Trust Meri which has been relocated from an outer province. Access to secretariat and LRC facilities will be a vast improvement on the previous arrangements which Trust Meri had to operate under, prior to their relocation to Port Moresby.

Most of the activities in and around the LRC will be focused around the provision of training for literacy and awareness workers around PNG, as well as those within the Melanesian Trust network in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia and West Papua. While the LRC's objectives are focused on women's and girl's literacy needs, these will be addressed in the context of the broader training program which PNG Trust carries out.

The purpose of the Training Courses is to help meet the needs for trained literacy and awareness workers to carry out the objectives of Melanesian Government's ongoing work in the field of literacy and awareness and to assist non-governmental agencies in their literacy and awareness efforts. The training courses offer training for the local (PNG) languages Tok Pisin and Hiri Motu, Solomon Island Pijin, and Vanuatu Bislama literacy workers at five levels:

The network built as a result of the National Literacy and Awareness Training Courses (NLATC) is actively engaged in literacy and awareness activities throughout Papua New Guinea and Melanesia. PNG Trust partner organizations have coordinated over 500 literacy and awareness classes and schools in all states of Melanesia. Thus far 2,000 literacy and awareness workers have been trained by PNG Trust and materials for literacy and awareness have been produced in over 150 languages during the NLATC.

One of the main objectives of the Training Courses remains the training of Melanesian Literacy Trainers who will be able to conduct such courses in the future without relying on extensive assistance from non-Melanesians. PNG Trust has worked closely with other indigenous NGOs in Melanesia including Solomon Islands Development Trust, Vanuatu Komuniti Development Trust, and the Literacy Association of Solomon Islands. The regional cooperation among these indigenous NGOs has led to the formation of a regional grouping called Melanesian Trust (MELTRUST). Melanesian Trust believes that Melanesians themselves must determine the kind of skills and information to better develop themselves and their resources. Through these processes, the people will realise that they have power and control over their own destinies.

Due to the work of PNG Trust through the NLATC, there are presently over 100 Melanesians who are prepared to take the highest positions of responsibility in literacy. These Melanesian Trainers are now being called upon to conduct workshops and courses in literacy and awareness throughout the region. This continues to be one of the major accomplishments of the Training Courses for in the past such work was usually reserved for non-Melanesian.

The PNG Trust aims to train members of village and settlement communities in the skills and techniques that they need to actively engage themselves in participatory dialog with their communities.

The PNG Trust approach is community based. The Trust trains trainers who are members of the communities themselves and have ongoing day-to-day relationship with the people. Although these trainees may not have "paper credentials" they are very highly qualified to communicate with the members of their communities in culturally and linguistically appropriate ways to facilitate the process of mobilising community members to take action to solve community problems and achieve community goals themselves.

Good literacy and awareness work cannot be carried out in a single day or at a course or workshop. It requires an intimate and ongoing process of engagement with the community. The PNG Trust training team works in close association with the grassroot NGOs who belong to the PNG Trust network to identify key community members who will be trained to be involved in their communities in the literacy and awareness process. The NGO network partners of the PNG Trust also organise district level follow-up training workshops to reinforce the skills gained by their community literacy and awareness workers at the PNG Trust courses, as well as to adapt these skills to the particularities of local conditions.

Dialog is the key technique that is promoted by PNG Trust in its training for literacy and awareness workers. Dialog mean two-way communication. We train literacy and awareness workers to avoid preaching (monologue) at all cost. Instead, we train awareness workers to ask questions and to encourage community member to discuss and identify their problems and goals for themselves and to devise their own plans for solving their problems and achieving their goals.